Displaying blonde, corn-fed good looks, Laura Linney has built a career playing idealistic women who are not always as normal as they appear. Linney came to film via theater, a medium in which she had been involved more or less since birth. The daughter of respected off-Broadway playwright Romulus Linney, Laura Linney was born in New York City on February 5, 1964. Her parents divorced when she was six months old. Thanks to her father’s job, Linney grew up working in the theater, both behind the scenes and, in her late teens, on the stage. Following prep school in Massachusetts, she attended both Brown University and Juilliard, and she was soon appearing in a number of Broadway productions. She garnered notice for her roles in plays like The Seagull and Six Degrees of Separation, and won particular acclaim for her performance in Hedda Gabler.